Readers could not access several news sites in Vietnam, including the popular Thanh Nien, Tien Phong, Sai Gon Giai Phong, Voice of Vietnam, Zing, and Bao Moi, for hours on Sunday due to disconnected power supply at VinaData, a data center owned by tech company VNG. The newspapers, which all use the ePi content management system hosted on the center, could not be accessed between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. Mai Ngoc Phuoc, editor in chief at Phap Luat (Laws) newspaper, said the volume of pageviews at its website plo.vn fell 30 percent from the normal weekend level. “The incident also left a considerable impact on the running of advertisements on our site. We are still collecting specific figures of the damage.” Nguyen Ba, deputy editor in chief at Infonet.vn, the news website of Vietnam’s information ministry, reported similar loss of pageview on Sunday. “There are several major events and stories that happened on Sunday that attracted readers but our site went offline for hours. Our reporters and editors had their hands tied during the period,” he said. In an email sent to its clients earlier, VinaData said the disruption was due to a power cut at Quang Trung Software City (QTSC) in Ho Chi Minh City, where the data center is located. But Phuoc of Phap Luat said VinaData had been “careless” and failed to have a back-up plan because QTSC had informed its clients about the power cut several days before. He goes on to say… [Read full story]